ANT1000 - Fall 2007       Heather M.-L. Miller, Instructor

COLLABORATIVE PROPOSAL ASSIGNMENT


For this assignment, you will describe a proposed project that involves collaboration of some kind.  This description should be written as a summary of the proposed project, for a grant proposal or other purposes, such as a job application.

***I am most interested in creative uses of collaboration to answer questions, so that is what you should concentrate on -- your question(s) and how you will use collaboration to address them.  

Think of this as an extension of your earlier work on grant proposal writing -- be sure to make your questions/topics/theses clear, and be sure to indicate the importance of the project.  (In other words, why should scholars or other people care about this research?)
I will also evaluate how clearly and concisely you present your project.

All assignments should be submitted as a paper document on Friday, Dec. 7.  
I will arrange to be at St. George that day (hours and locations to be provided in Dec. 3 class), or you can put it my mailbox in the department office NO LATER THAN 4:30 pm.
You may turn the paper in on Wed. Dec. 3 in class if you wish.  

PROJECT:
--You may expand on the project described for your grant proposal earlier in the semester, or do something completely different.   You should consider yourself to be a starting or mid-level PhD student for the purposes of this proposal, and keep the project at an appropriate scale (see below for more).
--For ideas, think about the various projects you have heard about in class, or other projects about which you have heard or in which you have participated.   Web searches might turn up interesting types of collaborations as well.
--You will not be asked to create and justify a budget, although I expect you to create a reasonable project, not something that would require a significant proportion of the entire granting agency budget.

COLLABORATORS:
--Your collaborators might be in the same discipline (Anthropology), in the same or different sub-disciplines, or in different disciplines.  In all cases, you will have to justify their participation, based on their background and skills.  These may be real people (including your fellow students), or they may be people you have invented, but invented people must have reasonable skills and background.   
--You may be the primary director of the project (in which case it should be a fairly small
project), or you may be one member of a larger group.   
If you are the primary director and you want to include senior researchers on the project, you will have to justify why they would be willing to work on your project -- in other words, try to be realistic.
You might also think about the likelihood that your peers or junior scholars would be more willing and more able to devote time and attention to this project, as a way to increase their own standing and expand their research interests.    (FYI:   You may not pay project members for their participation, although you might be able to cover their expenses in the field.)
--Your collaborators might be in the field at the same time as you are, or you may only meet periodically to review findings.  You may share all of your results, or do separate projects that only intersect at certain topics.  You might also discuss what will happen to the final data:  Who will take charge of project data while the project is on-going?  Will it eventually go into an archive somewhere?  If you like, you can also mention decisions about publication rights.

STRUCTURE:
--All documents should be in Arial 12 point font with 3/4" or 3 mm margins, single-spaced.  The expected length is about 5 pages, with a maximum length of 6 pages.  Papers must be in the format specified below.

I. Title section (don't use a full page) in the following format:
YOUR FULL NAME  
PROPOSAL/PROJECT TITLE
Example:      
Heather M.-L. Miller  
Historic Trade and Communication Networks between South and Central Asia

II. Summary of Proposed Project:   Basically, an abstract that should provide an overview of the project and its goals.   This should be about one page in length.

III. Project Participants. In a list format, provide:
--the full names of your collaborators;
--their affiliations; "Independent Scholar" is fine for someone not affiliated with an organization;
--a few lines laying out their primary background  for participation in the project:  discipline, topics of specialty, skills, etc.

IV. Detailed Description of Project.  This is the full version of your project, and should take up 3 to 4 pages; I recommend dividing the statement into the following sub-sections, but if your proposal works better in a different format, that is fine.   Be sure to indicate the role of your collaborators in various aspects of the work, as appropriate.  (You can refer to them by surname only, as in "Miller will be responsible for . . ." .)
Possible Sub-sections:  Objectives; Background (or Context --  how this project fits in the discipline/field of study); Methods (or Approach)

V. References: You may add additional pages for references (beyond the maximum of 6), if you desire.  An extensive bibliography is not necessary for this assignment.  You do not need to include CVs.



 Remember that this is 40% of your work for the class, so don't leave it till the last minute!